Frozen Darkness (He Looked Back)
by Diana Prallon
Summary: What was left was clinging to the rage and the bitter taste of betrayal.


**Frozen Darkness (He Looked Back)**

The darkness surrounded him, embracing him like an ardent lover. There was nothing around him, nothing to hold him to the world, only whispers. Long lost voices, faint and ghostly, dark and accusing. He fought against them, pretending he couldn't hear.

 _If I look back, I am lost._

He was not a man to be controlled by fear. He was Aerys of House Targaryen, Second of His Name, King of Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm. More than that: he was the blood of the dragon, and dragons didn't recoil in fear of things that were as immaterial as dreams.

 _If I look back, I am lost._

What was left was clinging to the rage and the bitter taste of betrayal – yes, it couldn't be imagined to be anything else to withhold taxes from the crown and imprisoning your Rightful King. There was nothing he could do but wait, wait for the swift retribution that would rob Dunskendale of everything that had ever conquered. And yet, why would anyone be loyal to him, when he was a traitor himself?

 _If I look back, I am lost._

It mattered not, for his Hand would come and free him soon enough. It was only a matter of time, and the slight wouldn't be well seen in King's Landing; or the demonstration of strength. A Lannister always paid his debts, and the King's debts where the Hand's debts as well. And even if she was an unappealing and quiet thing, Rhaella was still a Targaryen, and the fury of a dragon was legendary. Together, they would rescue him and completely ruin the traitorous Lord Denys – everything they had come from him, after all.

 _If I look back…_

Unless… Unless they meant to let him rot from everything he had done. They were silly things, his wife and Tywin, and they might have missed the honors he gave them. Rhaella was too fearful by far, and Tywin too proud. And yet – yet – he had done much for them. Who didn't want a wife that had been loved by a King? How much it meant for a man to have a woman that was so desirable that even King's yearned for them? Joanna had been beautiful, inciting, and reluctant as a proper wife should be; so how could his Hand ever hold it against him? He had stepped low to pay his compliments to her beauty; and only time would tell if he had indeed blessed her with more than that before her untimely death.

 _If I look back…_

And Rhaella… Was it possible that she didn't see that it had been for her as well as for him? That he had revenged for both of them? He could have left her in Summerhall, but he had made sure that she was on her way back before the orders were fulfilled; he had saved her from the inferno created by the foolish ideas of an old, believing man. Rhaella and Rhaegar both were halfway to Ashford, even though he could have left her over to rot as the useless, unwanted thing that she had always been. He _saved_ her, would it be that she _blamed_ him; for the revenge and the crown, both?

 _I am lost_

The darkness grew heavier, as if they were involving him in his own winding-sheet. Rhaegar was a man grown, they didn't need him anymore – he could hear the words and the treason beneath them in the sound of scurrying rats, and the chill of his cell equal to that of lair, buried by a coldness that rivaled the raging inferno of his grandfather's tomb; but this froze him while the fire would never burn him, for he was the true dragon, son, husband and father of dragons, as he had proved when he walked out of the flames untouched; for fire bent to true fire, but the ice that was building around him would surely drown him; it was not fire and no fire could survive it, not even dragonfire could melt the heavy blanket that they threatened them with.

 _I am lost_

"I'll never allow the flames to stay far from me", he vowed himself, muttering in the dark. "I'll never allow the cold winds to defy me again, nor cold men and cold hearts."

 _I am lost_

They came, after a long while, and opened up the doors, guiding him back to life and sunlight, to the warmth of summer, but they could never close the doors of memories and the knowledge of the treason in their hearts, waiting the moment to strike, betrayers, all of them. But they wouldn't touch him, not while he had fire to protect him, and that wisdom, too, they couldn't take away from him. He knew it all. He remembered it all. He was the King, and he would make them remember it too.

 _I am lost_

 _I am lost_

 _I am lost_


End file.
